Illinois Open East
An attempt at hosting a tournament by a VCU "team" that, in fall 2003, still consisted only of Matt Weiner. The tournament's full name was Illinois Open East: Alpha and Omega Bowl, after the accusation that Matt Weiner considered himself "the alpha and omega of good question writing."
Unable to convince his non-quizbowl friends to get up at 8 AM on a Saturday morning in order to read at a tournament, Weiner offered discounts to the West Virginia Wesleyan team to bring enough people to staff the tournament, as well as a laptop to run stats.
The Richmond Marathon caused teams great distress in getting to the campus, leading Southern Virginia to arrive during Round 2 and Wake Forest to miss the tournament completely. The tournament was also by far the most difficult Illinois Open ever written, leading the inexperienced players on the West Virginia Wesleyan, Southern Virginia, and Maryland B teams (3/5 of the field) to struggle mightily with the questions.
Ultimately, the double-round robin ended with Maryland A and Duke each at 7-1, having split their two games. A one-game final was held in which Maryland took the title 210-155. Matt did not try to host a tournament at VCU again until he had an actual team there in 2007, instead co-hosting events at Virginia in 2005 and Maryland in 2006.